Ghost Train
by ablett29
Summary: You're Rose, aren't you," Martha says, and the girl nods once, her eyes deep and somehow pleased.


**Title**: Ghost Train**  
Spoilers**: Pretty much all of season 3.**  
Rating**: PG**  
Summary**: "You're Rose, aren't you," Martha asks, and the girl nods once.

Martha meets her that first day, when she's still lost and confused and bombarded with information that she can't hope to absorb. She turns a corner into what's possibly the longest corridor she's ever seen when she comes across a girl not much younger than herself.

The girl stands utterly still, staring beyond Martha, blonde hair falling over her shoulders.

Martha stops, taken aback. The girl shifts her focus, looks at Martha. There's a silence and then a groaning noise from along the corridor and the floor shifts underneath them. Martha stares around, looks back at the girl for answers. She receives no reply. The groaning comes again and, with one last look at the girl behind her, Martha runs toward the noise, leaving the girl staring after her.

At the end of the corridor Martha finds herself back in the console room, the Doctor busily tinkering with the controls.  
"Who's -," she begins, but is cut off as the Doctor starts a babble about the TARDIS. She never does get to ask her question.

II

She meets her again not so much later, just after her encounter with Shakespeare, when she opens a door in the hope of finding the console, but finds instead an impossibly large room filled with trees and plants – and the blonde girl standing in front of it all.

The girl looks at her, studying Martha intently. There's a silence and then Martha carefully asks, "Sorry, but who are you?" The girl blinks, and then a strange, golden light seems to shine from her eyes.  
"I am the Bad Wolf," she says, her voice strong and somehow dual. "I am Time. I am -,"

"Martha!" The Doctor's voice startles her, and she turns. "It's dangerous in here," he warns. "Be careful."  
"I was just talking to –," Martha begins, turning to indicate the girl standing not five feet away from them. Then she halts.

The girl, inexplicably, is gone.

Martha stares, searching with her eyes the expanse of alien plants. Perhaps she sees a glimmer of blonde hair between the leaves. Or perhaps it's only an illusion.

"Is there anyone else on the TARDIS?" Martha asks after a minute, turning to face the Doctor.  
"No." the Doctor says, frowning. "Just you and me. Did you see someone?" The Doctor's voice is eager, but Martha shakes her head.  
"No, no one," she says quietly. "No one at all."

In the distance, she thinks she hears someone laughing.

II

It isn't until later, when she's met the blonde girl a few more times that she finds out who she is.

"Your last companion, what was she like?" she asks when they're in New New York, searching for the people, and the Doctor's pained description of her makes her understand.

II

The next time she sees the blonde girl, she asks her.  
"You're Rose, aren't you," she says, more of a statement than a question, and the girl nods once, her eyes deep and somehow pleased.

"What are you doing here?" Martha asks, but Rose doesn't answer. Martha glances away, thinks about the Daleks that she recently saw evolve just to stay alive, and when she looks back, Rose is gone.

II

It becomes an unspoken rule between them; Martha doesn't ask and Rose doesn't tell. By the time Martha has seen an old man turn into a scorpion and back again, Martha is used to Rose's presence.

She comes often, always when Martha is alone, and she stands, silent and watchful as Martha goes about her daily activities. She never speaks.

Martha talks to her though, about her life and her old job and her adventures. Rose changes only when Martha speaks about the Doctor, and she listens with a look on her face that somehow speaks of both wisdom and hunger, yet still with the sweetness of humanity behind it.

Martha talks about the Doctor a lot.

Rose finds other ways to communicate, though. The night after Martha is almost killed by a sentient sun, her dreams are filled by the image of a door – white and unremarkable save for a floral design in the bottom right-hand corner. When Martha finds the door in a corridor of the TARDIS the next day, she knows it wasn't a coincidence.

Behind the door there's a bedroom. It's Rose's, Martha knows that immediately. The bed is untidy, magazines and make up piled haphazardly on shelves, and it really strikes Martha for the first time that Rose had once been a real, living person, just like herself.

Martha's not surprised when she turns around to find Rose. There's a new expression on her face, one that Martha would almost call wistful. Martha considers her for a moment, then turns, studies the room. She is careful; she feels almost as though she is intruding, despite Rose's presence behind her. Rose has moved when she turns around, standing now in front of an open drawer.

Inside is a framed photograph showing the Doctor and Rose, laughing together. Martha feels a stab of jealousy but on looking at the Rose standing next to her, it disappears.

Martha takes the photo and puts it on a ledge in the console. When she looks later, it's gone.

II

"He still misses you, you know," Martha says as Rose stares out into 1913 through the window of Martha's little room she shares with Jenny. "Joan's a lot like you. Smart, brave, blonde …" Martha glances down, looks back up to find Rose facing her.

"He loves you."

Martha could swear she sees the ghost of a smile on Rose's lips.

II

And it makes sense because she thinks that Rose herself _is_ a ghost, _must_ be a ghost. It's clear to her when no one in the crowd of people waiting to go to Utopia even _blinks_ when Rose appears quite suddenly, flickering, and the most agitated Martha has ever seen her.

Rose is staring at the man they've picked up, the friend of the Doctor's that is so charming. It's obvious she knows him; of course Jack had asked the Doctor about her – it was clear there was a history. There's something strange about Jack as well, Martha's sure of it, she just can't figure out what…

It's still a shock when she sees a stunned expression on Jack's face, and realizes as Rose flickers out of existence, that he wasn't looking _through_ her, but _at_ her.

II

Rose is there as Martha packs her bags and prepares to go home.

Martha sees her, but doesn't say anything. When she's finished, she turns and looks Rose in the eye.  
"Goodbye," she says. Rose's expression does not change. "You look after him," Martha says. "I know you can."

Rose is standing over the Doctor's shoulder as Martha leaves the TARDIS.

II

It's strange to be back in her old room, with all her ordinary things that she thought were so important before she met the Doctor. It's strange too, to feel so alone, without the Doctor, without the hum of the TARDIS surrounding her.

Without Rose.

Martha puts away her things in silence, looks around at the almost unfamiliar room. It's bizarre, but as she bends down to reach a drawer, she almost feels that other presence in the room with her. But she's being silly. She's not in the TARDIS anymore.

As she looks up, she could swear she saw a glimpse of blonde hair in the mirror.


End file.
